Development and preliminary validation of a silhouette satiety scale for children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether young children are capable of using pictorial silhouettes to quantify feelings of satiety and provide preliminary data on the validity of this method. Subjects were 20 children, 4-6 years old, recruited from a preschool. We hypothesized that subjects would be able to use the silhouettes to communicate different levels of satiety when imagining eating situations associated with different levels of fullness. The study was conducted in three stages: Stage 1 probed children's spontaneous definitions of hunger and fullness and identified specific eating situations they associated with these feelings; Stage 2 tested whether children could perform basic quantitative discriminations applied to food-related stimuli; Stage 3 validated the silhouettes using an 'imagined eating situation' in which subjects used the silhouettes to rate how full their belly would feel in three distinct eating situations associated with different levels of satiety. Main results indicated that (1) most children readily associated the stomach with feelings of hunger (90%) and fullness (70%), (2) 80% of the children said they felt fullest after eating a meal, (3) 90-100% of the children were able to perform basic quantitative discriminations using food-related stimuli, and (4) children reported increasing feelings of satiety for situations associated with hunger, partial satiety, and satiety. Children were generally consistent in their ratings across testing sessions, although responses were less consistent for intermediary satiety levels. Young children may be more capable of quantitatively reporting feelings of satiety than is commonly believed, if appropriate experimental materials are used.